• Canva has announced a major organizational restructuring, including staff relocations and layoffs.
• The changes come as it has had its weakest performance in 13 years and follow layoffs across the tech sector in 2026.

Creative software firm Canva is the latest tech company announcing significant layoffs.

In a note to employees, Canva’s co-founder and CEO, Melanie Perkins, said that 1,271 people, about 22% of its staff, would be impacted by a significant restructuring. Some will be asked to relocate to centralized hubs, while others will be laid off.

“After months of thinking through how to set Canva up for the next chapter, we have made the incredibly hard decision to make significant changes to how we’re organized, where some of our teams are based, and the roles and skills we need for the future,” Perkins said.

Canva’s reorganization includes merging its Product, Growth, and Platform teams under a single new Product Organization team to flatten the business’s internal structure. This, Perkins explained, will make it easier to take ownership of bigger problems and build a deeply unified product for its customers. Organizing the once-separate teams will also require fewer handoffs and less coordination, as well as consolidating roles, the CEO explained.

Additionally, Canva’s co-founder announced that Sydney, Australia, will become the primary home for more of its product teams and other specialty roles. By January, Canva expects hybrid employees to spend 2-3 days in-office per week.

Those being laid off will receive at least six months’ severance pay, a full year of continued health coverage, and get to keep their company MacBook, among other benefits.

Perkins also announced the launch of the Canva Collective Fund, which provides grants of up to $100,000 to departing employees to fund new businesses or do “something meaningful” for their local communities. Canva will not take ownership or equity in projects it funds through these grants.

Canva’s move comes as demand for its product has been weakening, as its target market, non-designers, is opting to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude instead. It also follows Microsoft’s offer of buyouts to 60,000 employees after laying off 4,800 people this summer, two rounds of layoffs at Oracle this year (one communicated via a 6 am email), and announced workforce reductions at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Adobe, the category leader in creative software, has also struggled in the early days of AI, despite heavy investments and its integration of the technology across its portfolio. The maker of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign has seen its stock price go down roughly 30% in the past year.